Charlie Christie - Change needed to give more youngsters chance in Premiership
I read with interest the recent report about the lack of game time in Scottish football for home grown players and some of the reasons offered up by our Premiership clubs for this.
It is something I have commented about previously and I even suggested a few years ago that a rule should exist where all league clubs have stricter criteria which compels them to develop and play young players.
A suggestion that was met with little support from many in the game, but which has now been raised again as a potential solution.
It was quite incredible to read that Rangers football club gave the grand total of just 29 minutes to Scottish under-21 players throughout last season whilst Celtic were not much better with 89 minutes; all of which were attributed to one player.
Dundee were top with 3,538 minutes being played by home grown under 21 players and they are an excellent example of a club who have prospered in recent seasons with first promotion and then a top six league placing whilst still endeavouring to play academy players - huge credit to them.
It was a fascinating report to read with all manner of reasons being given for our shortfall.
Lack of strategic planning at board level, the size of our top league, pressure on managers and the lack of monetary incentives to play young players being a few but much of this has been said before and little has been done to change the outcome. For me, resourcing the development of a club’s young talent, planning an individual pathway for each player, having a policy at board level and a first team manager who buys into that policy trumps everything.
Scotland fall behind almost every other country of a similar size when it comes to playing our own young players at first team level and has done so for quite some time.
I only hope that this excellent and detailed report can trigger a change in our thinking going forward.
Last weekend was one of the most enjoyable I’ve had for quite some time in a football
sense.
Starting on the Friday evening with a thoroughly entertaining 4-0 win for ICT under 18s in the cup against Bonnyrigg Rose it continued throughout Saturday as Caley Thistle recorded their first league win of the season with a hard-fought victory over Queen of the South thanks
to an instinctive finish from Billy Mackay. Whilst we still aren’t firing on all cylinders it was a very welcome three points and we looked very assured defensively throughout the game against a very physical Queens side.
Son Ryan’s Bournemouth then rounded the afternoon off perfectly as they completed a quite astounding late come back at Everton with three goals in the final six minutes – a record in the English Premiership which also saw them celebrate their first league win of the season.
The next day saw the first Old Firm derby of the season as Rangers made the short trip to the East end of Glasgow to face their bitter rivals. Rangers started relatively well but as soon as they conceded in the 17 th minute, they never ever looked like getting back in the game
and Celtic ran out comfortable winners. Yet again the match displayed the gulf in class between the two sides and the fact of the matter is that currently, Celtic simply have better players in all departments.
